British Energy's Lights
Will Stay On, But Value
For Holders Is Elusive

Edited by Hugo Dixon

Updated Oct. 2, 2003 12:01 a.m. ET

British Energy has been saved from bankruptcy and Britain's lights will stay on. The only real obstacle to the nuclear-power producer's restructuring plan is Brussels, but the European Commission will have a slim case. The irony is that the depressed wholesale-energy prices that prompted British Energy's crisis are firming even as costs are dropping. At the &pound;18.30 ($35.47 or &euro;30.41) per megawatt hour, a measurement of energy output, that British Energy has sold most of its power forward for the next two years,...